


Sweeter by the Hour

by In_agony_and_ecstasy



Series: A/B/O Joe and Nicky Modern AU [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alpha!Joe, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Heatfic, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pressure from parents, Religion, Smut, Vaginal Sex, first heat together, omega!nicky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:46:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29789376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/In_agony_and_ecstasy/pseuds/In_agony_and_ecstasy
Summary: Joe and Nicky are spending the day in because of a snow storm when Nicky unexpectedly goes into heat three weeks early. They've never spent Nicky's heat together, and due to Nicky's past, he has anxiety about it, but ultimately agrees to stay with Joe. Joe is excited about what this could mean for their relationship, which has already begun to bit by bit become more serious than casual.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: A/B/O Joe and Nicky Modern AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2209542
Comments: 10
Kudos: 131





	Sweeter by the Hour

**Author's Note:**

> So I only started reading a/b/o stuff very recently, and I find it really interesting so I wanted to write some. This is my take on it, though you might be able to tell from reading it that I don't know a lot about it so sorry about that. Also, in this a/b/o universe, all omegas have vaginas and just vaginas, and all alphas have penises (that can knot) and just that. So Nicky has a vagina but he's still a cis man. Hope that makes enough sense.
> 
> Anyways, thank you for reading and hope you enjoy it!

The first hint should have been that Nicky couldn’t get out of bed, even though he was normally an early riser and he had gone to bed at the normal time the night before. 

It was actually one of the first nights he’d stayed over and gone to bed without me. This made me happy, though I didn’t think he’d understand if I tried to explain why.

A week or two ago, he bought a toothbrush and left it here. A few days ago I emptied a drawer for him to fill with clothes or whatever else he wanted to keep here. I was buying the coffee he liked now, too. My apartment was gradually becoming a home to him. And the fact that he’d gone to bed before me last night, as casually as if it was his room as much as mine, as unceremoniously as if we’d been living together for years, rather than dating just six months – felt significant. He was comfortable here. He belonged here. 

And though we’d known each other for years, been friends equally as long, and he’d been here a thousand times and stayed over as many – nothing compared, to walking through the door later that night, inching into bed beside him, and wrapping my arm around him, pressing my nose against his neck and breathing his scent in deeply. I was starting to have a hard time sleeping without it, now that he stayed here on weekdays regularly too. 

The second hint should have been that his favorite coffee nauseated him. He’d finally gotten out of bed – I let him sleep in, since I got a call from our boss that it was snowing heavily out and not to bother coming into work today – and dragged himself to the couch. I’d made him coffee to help wake him the rest of the way, and upon handing it to him, rather than greeting me with a smile of gratitude, he grimaced and pushed it away. By the time he came out of the bathroom, I dumped it. We sat down at the breakfast table and watched the weather forecast on the TV for five minutes. In that time, I watched Nico eat six slices of plain bread without even noticing. I was about to ask him if it was because he was nauseated still, when he made his way to the living room couch and promptly fell asleep. I sat next to him, drinking water because I had no coffee, and watched the list of schools getting long weekends due to the unexpected snow day today scroll on the bottom of the screen. 

Later, when it was nearly dinner time, he was still fighting sleep. His head rested on my shoulder as we binge watched a show of my choosing, since he warned me he probably wouldn’t pay attention. When I asked him if he wanted to do something else, he told me he didn’t have the energy. I suggested he go to bed early, and he told me he wanted to be with me, even if we weren’t doing anything, which was nice.

The final hint really, was him absentmindedly pressing his face against my shoulder and near my throat, like he was trying to cover himself in my scent. 

I still didn’t connect the dots. 

His heat wasn’t due for three weeks, and he was very regular. Four times a year, same weeks each year, for the last five. I’d been friends with him long enough to witness its regularity, and mourn during those weeks at work he took heat-leave because they were the most boring weeks of the year. 

And I’d never been around anyone else in heat. I had no omega siblings, my mother stopped going through heat before I was old enough to understand or notice those things, and I’d only ever had alpha and beta roommates, first because that was how my college dorms were separated, and then, in my first apartment, my roommate just happened to be an alpha too. How was I to know?

But now, after dinner, his scent changed. 

Something sweeter than his usual cool breezy scent. And it took me a moment to place it, but that something was a lot like watermelon. 

I flinched next to him, becoming hard and trying to lean away from him. He didn’t notice, still dozing on the couch paying no attention to the TV.

“Nicky?” I said, quietly.

“Hmmm.”

I hesitated, unsure how to broach the subject. “You’re uh – next heat – it’s-”

His eyes widened, and he whipped his head to look at me. “Oh my God.”

“What?” I asked even though I knew.

“Oh my God!” he said, “How did I not –?”

And then he was running to the bathroom. I wanted to follow, but figured it must be private if he wasn’t willing to do it in the living room.

When he stepped out, he started pacing. “I’m going into heat.”

“Yeah, I – I thought you smelled… _off_ ,” I said, meaning _intoxicating_. 

“This shouldn’t be happening,” he said.

I nodded. 

“I haven’t – it hasn’t been irregular since – the first couple of times.”

“Well should I – bring you home?” I asked, looking out the window. It was dark now, and still snowing heavily. I didn’t like the idea of driving in this any more than I liked the idea of his pre-heat ending on the subway ride home, surrounded by other people – alphas – who would also be able to smell watermelon. 

But I’d never spent a heat with him. I’d never spent a heat with _anybody_. I grew up religious and though I wasn’t intending to wait for a bonding ceremony or anything I still wasn’t the kind of alpha who spent a heat with a stranger or even someone I was casually seeing. 

And Nicky…also grew up religious. Grew up _Catholic_ , which meant his religion’s perspective on these matters were very different than that of my own religion, Islam. From the moment he presented when he was nineteen there was excessive pressure to abstain during heats unless he was trying to get pregnant. His church even had dormitories for young omegas to stay in during their heats, and be watched over exclusively by other omegas and mated members of the church. He was expected to endure the pain and fever without even touching himself, which, apparently, was meant to prove something to God. That you feared him, or were loyal to him, or didn’t give in to temptation, or some other fucked up thing I didn’t get.

In any case, though he didn’t believe in that at all himself anymore, he had also never spent a heat with anyone.

He was looking out the window now, too. 

“Hey, Joe,” he said.

“Hmmm?”

“Didn’t your last rut come late?” he asked.

I tilted my head back to think, and realized that, yes, it had. My ruts weren’t as perfectly regular as Nicky’s heats, but even if I pillowed the time of year I had anticipated my last rut to come, it still came at least two weeks late. 

Nicky turned around to face me and slowly eased back down on the couch. His eyelids still looked heavy, but weighed down by more than just sleep now. He was scared. 

Now that he’d reminded me my own rut was late, I understood why.

We were synching up. 

Something that could take years, even for bonded pairs, was starting to happen to us by six months. His next heat, and my next rut, would be even closer together. The time following that, they would overlap. And the time after that, they would happen simultaneously. In less than a year from now.

And we weren’t even bonded.

Our eyes met. Nicky’s hands were shaking. I pulled one into my own.

“We’ve known each other for years,” I tried to tell him.

“I’ve known a lot of people for years,” he said.

“We’ve always been close.”

“Why do you think –”

I wanted to say _because even our bodies know we’re supposed to be together_ but I didn’t.

I loved him, I had loved him for so long, almost as long as I could remember. I fell for him easily, and enthusiastically, and spent all the time between then and us getting together aching for him. 

He’d told me that it’d gone much the same way for him, but that this had scared him. Everything about mating scared him. I always had to remind myself it meant something very different in his world than it did in mine. My parents had courted for two years before their bonding ceremony, and were quite happily in love by that time, or else wouldn’t have gone through with it.

His parents had bonded impulsively, when his father’s rut and his mother’s heat happened to already coincide upon meeting. They were barely even coherent at the time, and had made the biggest decision of either of their lives in the heat of the moment.

This was the story of many who took the risk of sharing a heat or rut with someone else they barely knew going through the complimentary process. Nicky’s parents barely got along save for the biological, instinctual pull of the mating mark. Forever tied to one another, more permanent than marriage ever could be. Nicky wanted to marry, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to mate. Mating could not be undone. 

Naturally, I feared this too, or I might have spent a rut with someone already.

But my fear for it was nothing like Nicky’s was.

I cupped his face in my hands. “What do you want to do?”

I hoped he understood that I would help however I could. Even if that meant he locked himself in my room for five days and endured it alone. Even if that meant I had to sleep on the couch, listening to him in pain at night. I hoped he wouldn’t insist I take him home, but if he asked me to I would. I would make sure he got home safely and comfortably before going into full-blown heat.

“I – God, if I had – had realized it. I would have just let myself sleep. I would have eaten more. I – don’t know what to do. This is going to be hell,” he said. 

I nodded, like I understood, though I didn’t really. Obviously, I understood some general facts. I’d dealt with sex ed. class like everyone else, when they separated us all by gender and status and taught us individually the anatomy and biological conditions of all the others. I understood, technically, that he was supposed to eat and sleep a lot beforehand, in preparation for the fatigue and weakness and inevitable weight loss. But, facts taught to me years ago long before my first rut when this knowledge would actually interest me – didn’t feel especially helpful at the moment.

“How much time do you have? I could order in. You could eat more, go to bed early –”

“Okay, okay,” he said, nodding and trembling. “I should have until morning. Okay.”

“Okay,” I said, patting his shoulder. 

“What else do you need?” 

“To call our boss and get leave,” he said.

“I’ll call for you Monday morning.”

“Really?” he asked, clearly relieved he wouldn’t have to call our boss’s home phone. 

“Of course. What else?” I said. 

He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the hall leading to my bedroom. He swallowed. “A…nest.”

I pressed my lips together. Firstly, I didn’t want him to realize I was relieved he was staying. Nor did I want him to suspect that I was excited about sharing a nest with him – a much more significant gesture in my culture than his. Especially because I still wasn’t sure this _was_ an invitation.

Secondly…I lived very much like the typical alpha bachelor. Not something that mattered when I never spent a heat with anyone, but something that would matter now. I didn’t have a canopy or four poster bed with curtains. I didn’t have sideboards to pull up on the bed. I didn’t even have very many pillows to line the sides of the bed with instead. 

“Okay,” I said anyway. “I’ll – I’ll get that ready while you eat, okay?”

He blushed then. “Do you have any dirty laundry?”

“Always,” I said, huffing out a laugh. It was my least favorite chore.

“Use that,” he said, looking away from me. “It will help.”

I still didn’t know if I was joining him.

“Nicky…what should I do if – we should decide now what’s – I need to know what you’re okay with _before_ –”

His brow furrowed. “Do you not want me?”

“What? No – no, I – I just didn’t know if _you_ wanted my help or –”

He cleared his throat. “I do. Want your help, I mean. But…you – you can’t use your teeth. At all. Anywhere. Even lightly.”

“I would never,” I blurted, immediately. Both desperate to reassure him I wouldn’t take advantage of him like that, and shamefully excited he was considering this. It wasn’t like we’d never had sex before. That we’d done, over and over, and would, I naturally hoped, over and over again and again.

But this wasn’t about the sex, no matter the stories people liked to share about how much better heat sex was. It was about what this _meant_ for us. What it meant _I_ was to _him_. 

He was quiet for a second, and then added, “You can’t let me either. Even if I –”

His cheeks were irresistibly red. I wanted to kiss him.

“Even if I try to, or – or _beg_ to or –”

“Never,” I said again, quieter, and stroked his cheekbone with my thumb. “You can trust me.”

“I know,” he said, like he was starting to relax. 

I got up then and ordered a pizza from the only place I didn’t feel too guilty ordering from at this time in this weather, a pizza place just a few blocks away. As I did, Nicky lied down on the couch. By the time the call was over, he was asleep again, and I headed into my bedroom.

A sudden sense of elation washed over me, as I recalled the day I presented. My first rut happened when I was eighteen and only lasted a couple of hours, as the early ones usually do. Luckily I was at home at the time, and didn’t have to go through the embarrassing ordeal of it happening at school, and having to wait in the nurse’s office until a parent could get out of work and pick me up.

When it was over, my dad decided it was time to have the talk with me. Not “the talk” that explained how sex worked, but the talk about an alpha’s responsibility to his or her omega, _should she or he choose an omega to be with_. I had already come out to my family about my attraction to alpha and beta men as well as omega men, so, that probably explained why he took the time to phrase it so carefully that way. I had always been fortunate to have such accepting parents. 

In my culture, my dad explained, “Every heat is a celebration of love, like a honeymoon.” But, he said, “But, it’s also like a vow renewal. With every heat, you are proving yourself to your partner. You are earning their devotion, trust, and love for you all over again each time. The greatest responsibility you have is to protect them, because they’re vulnerable. The next is to serve them, because they’re helpless. You provide a nest, food, water, bath, everything. Everything they need, you will have ready. You’ll make sure they sleep, even if they say they’re not tired. Make sure they eat, even if they say they’re not hungry. And make sure they hydrate, even if they say they’re not thirsty. They need you.”

My stomach turned as I looked at my bed, and realized I was already failing my first test. Sure, this wasn’t the middle ages. There wasn’t any true danger of alphas breaking into my apartment to claim or harm or rape Nicky while he was defenseless. But the instinctual heightened fear and environmental awareness in Omegas during heat, designed and encouraged by centuries of evolution, had not yet had the time to die off since locks had been invented. Nests helped calm this instinctual anxiety. My dad wouldn’t be proud of the makeshift nest I was about to create. Then again, he also wouldn’t be too proud it was happening before we married. 

A pang of fear hit my chest. Nicky and I might not marry at all. We hadn’t even discussed this. I realized then that I had been thinking of marrying him as though it was inevitable, but this was just wishful thinking.

I had to make this perfect for him. I had to prove myself. 

The first thing I did was push my bed into the corner of my room, so that the bed was against two walls. Then I pulled folded blankets and what pillows I did have out from my linen closet and stuffed them under the comforter around the edges of the bed. Finally, I dumped a basket of my laundry on top and then spread the articles of clothing out. Admittedly, I wasn’t the happiest about this, but I knew my scent would relieve some of his discomfort when I was unable to be knotting him, like, on Monday when I’d have to go to work. I was suddenly relieved today was Friday. We had the weekend uninterrupted.

I left my bedroom and headed for the kitchen to take bottles of water out of the fridge and carry them into the bedroom. I knew he wouldn’t want them cold. I didn’t remember everything I learned in sex ed., but I had heard that omegas tended to have an intolerance for any food or beverage that wasn’t room temperature during their heat. I left the water on my nightstand, and it would be warm by tomorrow morning.

Closing the bedroom door behind me, I heard a knock at the front door and jumped so that Nicky wouldn’t have to get it. I paid the delivery man and tipped him well.

When I turned around, Nicky was standing right there. I jumped, but he didn’t seem to notice. He’d already pulled the pizza box out of my hand, swung it open, and selected a slice. He bit into it and moaned. I laughed, because it couldn’t be that good. I’d ordered there before. 

“Thank you so much,” he said, and sat back down on the couch. “I’d share, but I’m going to eat this entire thing.”

I laughed. “Good.”

I turned to head back to the kitchen, only to realize I didn’t know what food he’d like. Water was the obvious choice for beverage, but I couldn’t begin to guess what he’d crave in heat.

“Hey, Nicky?” I asked, pivoting on my foot to face him again.

“Hmmm?” he answered around another bite. The first slice was already gone and he was on his second.

“What do you like to eat when you’re in heat?”

He stared blankly at me. “Do you have any saltines?”

I nodded. “What else?”

“That’s enough.”

I gaped at him. “That absolutely is _not_ enough, Nicky. Is that really all you eat?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes. I mean, sometimes it’s all I can keep down.”

Shaking my head, I headed to the kitchen and pulled out my entire box of Saltines from in the cupboard. Still, there was no way I was going to let him eat nothing but Saltines for four to five days. There had to be something else he could keep down. I swung my fridge open. At the moment, there was an excess of leftover take-out from various restaurants near my home. An Indian place, Chinese place, and a different, better, Italian place. So I had boxes of fried rice and noodles, a Tupperware bowl with curry in it and some garlic bread without any marinara sauce. I frowned. 

All of this was – too much. Too much flavor. 

I shut my fridge and started shuffling through my cupboards. A few boxes of Craft Mac N’ Cheese. Some canned soup. A sack of potatoes. I wondered if I could get him to eat potatoes, but realized nobody, in heat or not, wanted to consume lukewarm potatoes.

I shut my cupboards, and in doing so, my fruit basket came into my line of sight, on the counter. There were a half-dozen or so apples, some oranges, and even a lime. Again, too flavorful. But there were also bananas. Room-temp, ripe, bananas. Not juicy or citrusy or spicy or any overpowering flavor. Just dull, boring bananas. 

I brought those into the bedroom along with the Saltines. 

When Nicky was done eating, he showered, and then went straight to bed. I stayed up long enough to throw his empty pizza box away, do the dishes, and shower too, all while trying to keep as quiet as possible. Despite this, when I eased into bed next to him, by first climbing over the mounds of pillows and folded blankets and clothes, he woke up.

“Joe?” he asked.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

He scooted up next to me, and rolled over to press his back against my chest like he always did. I tucked my nose in the crook of his neck and inhaled his heat-sweetened scent. It was tinged with something sharp on my nose, like pepper.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, recognizing the scent as anxiety. 

“I’m just nervous about tomorrow,” he responded. “I don’t like being without control.”

I nodded, because I knew this well about him. It extended beyond just control over his hormones or body. He never got drunk, or gambled, or bought things impulsively. It sometimes took him weeks to make the most basic decisions, let alone decisions like this. He was the picture of pragmatism and control in all areas of his life. 

“It’ll be okay,” I told him, “By the time this is over, you’ll have forgotten why you were ever worried.”

He huffed, which, without seeing his face, was a noise I would have mistaken for annoyance if we didn’t know each other as well as we did. Given that we did, I knew he was wearing the smallest fraction of a smile right then. 

“You think?” he asked.

“I promise.”

He didn’t respond, and a moment later his breath deepened. I followed close behind.

…

I woke to the sound of him whimpering, which made my heart race in fear until I remembered what was happening. I rolled over to reach for the light on my nightstand, and then turned back to him. He was still asleep, but trembling and whimpering nonetheless. I pressed my hand against his forehead. It was slicked in sweat. My sheets were drenched with it. He was burning. The scent was dizzying. It wasn’t just his pheromones anymore either. I knew the bed was stained with more than just sweat, from his waist down. 

I didn’t know what I should do. He was clearly distressed – that much I could smell too. But he was still managing to sleep, and he would need the rest. But what quality of rest could he possibly be getting in this state?

I continued to stare at him, reaching for him, and pulling away just as soon, debating. I wished I had thought to ask about this beforehand, but I hadn’t known. Panic set in then, because who knew how much I still didn’t know. What else might happen in the next four to five days that would leave him dependent on me to make the right decision. 

I glanced at my alarm clock. It was four in the morning. Two hours before Nicky normally woke up. 

“Joe?” Nicky rasped, and I immediately sighed in relief because I wouldn’t have to make a decision. 

“I’m here,” I said rolling over and placing my hand on his waist.

“ _Joe_ ,” Nicky whined. 

“What do you need?” I blurted, suddenly worried for a different reason. I’d never seen him like this. He was rarely so expressive, regardless of what he was feeling and he sounded so clearly as though he was in pain.

He started clawing at his t-shirt but his movements were so feeble, as if he’d just come out of a coma.

“Do you want me to undress you?” I asked.

“So hot,” he said, squirming. “So hot. Should have – should have – gone to bed naked. _Joe_.”

I wouldn’t hear my name like that again. I turned him onto his back and pulled him forward by his wrists so that I could pull his shirt over his head. As I did, incidentally, our chests drew close together and our lips nearly touched and before I even pulled the shirt up and over his nose Nicky was mouthing at my throat and sniffing my neck and beard. He whimpered against my skin, and then he was clawing at my own shirt.

“Oh, do you –” I started but he cut me off, kissing me hungrily. His scent ripened with arousal and the intensity of his heat scent heightened even more.

“Mmm, want you, want you, want,” Nicky was murmuring against my skin, until he wasn’t talking and was just kissing, and then not even kissing, but _licking_ my skin. 

“God,” I said, finally gathering my thoughts enough to remember I was supposed to be undressing. I leaned away from Nicky to pull my shirt off, which both frustrated and excited Nicky. He didn’t want to tear his mouth away from my shoulder but he was still feebly tugging at the hem of my shirt.

“One second, my love,” I said, though he didn’t have the patience. He ducked his head under my shirt even as I was pulling it off and licked my chest and nipples. 

“ _God_ ,” I said, again. He was never like this. Even when the two of us first got together, after years of pining, even the very first night we found our way back to my apartment, and started making out in the hallway, and didn’t even stop when I unlocked my door, even when we tore clothes off in the living room and fucked on the floor because the bed was too far away –

Nicky was the patient one. Nicky was the one that teased, and tempted, and taunted me. The one that lured the animal out of _me_. 

“Joe, please,” he breathed, “please, please. Need you. Need you. _Need_.”

I needed him too, more than I ever had. Nicky was truly, the most beautiful omega, to me. Before we were dating, I would overhear office gossip by other alphas about the unbonded omegas we worked with. Their general consensus was that Nicky looked too much like an alpha or beta, given he was tall, and his shoulders were so broad. He sometimes sported a beard, or let his stubble grow in too, which was uncommon for omega men to do, if they were even able to grow facial hair beyond a mustache or goatee. 

But I loved the traits he had that were more alpha-like. And he had all the most attractive omega traits anyway. His chest was hairless, and his hips were wide, and his thighs were thick. His skin was so soft, and lips so full, and sea-green eyes so big. His belly was rounded slightly and pliant under my hand. I loved his androgyny. Really, I loved everything about him. The most gorgeous sunlit smile I’d ever seen and masculine hands and a lovely lullaby voice.

And his ass, I thought as I squeezed it, was second to none. That, the alpha members of the office agreed on. He had the most perfect ass. It infuriated me to know they thought it was wasted on him, when in reality, his ass was just the cherry on top of the otherwise, most mouthwatering dessert in existence. 

I rolled him onto his back, sunk myself down between his legs, and continued kissing him as I slipped my hand beneath the waistband of his briefs and inched them downward. 

Nicky helped, lifting off the bed and, once I got them down closer to his knees, kicking them off the rest of the way.

Immediately, I went to spread his already soaked lips with my fingers and taste him, but he jerked away from me.

I froze, and leaned away from him again, about to ask what I’d done. Before I could, he’d turned over on to his front and lifted his ass in the air, presenting for me in the most traditional way. I could have cried, or prayed, or both. This was really happening. I was sharing Nicky’s heat with him. I was going to be the first alpha to _ever_ service him through a heat. 

Again, I went to lick him, but he wriggled away from me. He reached down between his legs for the hem of my boxers.

“You,” he uttered. “Need you, Joe. Please now. _Please_.”

“Oh,” I blurted, stupidly. It hadn’t occurred to me that he’d be uninterested in foreplay during a heat but _of course_ he wouldn’t be interested. The relief came from being filled, from being knotted, and from my semen itself. Just orgasming helped nothing on its own save for the arousal, which would return immediately after he came if he wasn’t knotted. 

“Oh – okay. Fuck, okay,” I said, snapping myself out of it and slipping my boxers down enough to expose myself. I’d been hard since I woke up, and not just because it was morning wood. It would be difficult not to be with that scent in the air. But it was the excitement now, the sight of his arched back and perfect ass and slicked lips that had me leaking precum already. 

I stood on my knees behind him and pressed the head of my cock between his lips. Nicky moaned obscenely, and uttered another plea. I placed my hands on his hips and finally, sunk into him.

Once in, I braced myself by gripping onto his hips. People weren’t fucking exaggerating. It _was_ tighter. And so _so_ much hotter. And so fucking _wet_. Fuck, it left me trembling. 

Nicky lost patience, and started without me, before I’d gathered my senses enough to pace myself. He rutted against me with abandon, moaning the whole time and gripping onto the sheets. He uttered obscenities in Italian and told me how good I felt and how big I was, and how desperately he needed my knot.

Which was already starting to swell, making it the slightest bit more difficult for him to sink all the way down.

This was what reminded me where I was, who I was, what I was doing. I had a responsibility. This, as my father told me a thousand times growing up, wasn’t just sex. I could have just sex with anyone any time, and if I thought of it as just sex, I wasn’t mature enough to be doing this. Granted, I’d stopped needing this reminder years ago, but with this delicious feeling around my cock, it was easy to see why my dad continued to tell me this well after I understood. The moment I was inside him I felt braindead. 

But the point was, as much as I was providing him with pleasure this moment, I was also relieving him from future pain. The better this was now, the less pain he’d feel later. 

I stilled his hips, which made him whine. I shushed him like I would a half-asleep baby, and then slammed. 

And slammed, and slammed, over and over, making sure I went as deep and as hard as I could, getting the entirety of my swelling knot in as far as was possible each time, so that when it caught, it caught deep. 

“Oh,” Nicky moaned, “Oh, Joe. Oh Joe, thank you, thank you, _thankyouthankyouthankyou._ ”

Nicky came, screaming my name, and clenching a dozen times in quick succession around my cock. A familiar feeling, but not one I was used to feeling without some outside stimulation to his clit from my hand or a toy. I’d never made him come vaginally before, and had thought he _couldn’t_ come vaginally. My chest bloated with pride, and it took immense effort to stop my thrusts.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, with more cognizance in his voice than he’d had since waking up.

“Don’t you need a minute?” I asked, “You just came.”

“ _No_ ,” he demanded, and then whimpered, as if a sudden wave of pain washed over him, “ _No_ , Joe. Do _not_ stop until you’ve knotted me.”

That was all I needed to hear. It felt so impossibly good. So much better than I ever imagined. I never wanted it to end, and my heart about popped when the thought that this _wouldn’t_ end for at least another _four days_ entered my head. 

“Oh, Joe,” Nicky moaned, sounding more like he normally did during sex now. “I can feel how close you are. How big your knot is getting. Just come. Please, Joe, come. Knot me, baby, please, _please_.”

And then I was coming, slamming my cock in deep, catching my knot as far in as I could get it, and rutting against his ass, every nerve-ending singing. There was more impossibly quick clenching, like a hummingbird heartbeat – making it feel all the more heavenly for that much longer – and another moan from Nicky filled with ecstasy. He’d come again when I knotted him.

It took everything I had not to collapse on him, but to, in the most practiced way, rotate our joined bodies onto our sides, so that I was spooning him.

We were both panting. I placed my hand on his forehead, knowing even before I felt it, that his fever had broken for the time being. I pulled the blanket over us. Then I reached behind me and fumbled around until I got hold of a water bottle. 

“Here,” I said.

“I’m fine,” he said. 

“Humor me,” I said, remembering what my dad told me.

He took it from me and took the kind of huge gulps a very thirsty person takes. He emptied the bottle, and wore an expression afterward like he couldn’t believe it. I smiled and took the bottle from him and dropped it on the bedroom floor. I debated asking him to eat, but figured he actually wouldn’t be hungry yet. I’d have him eat when we woke up, even if he had to be knotted first.

I wrapped my arm back around his waist, and kissed up and down the length of his shoulder. We were quiet for several minutes, still recovering. 

“I didn’t bite you,” Nicky finally said, as though to himself.

I perked my head up. “Does that surprise you?”

“It’s all I could think about,” he said.

“Really?” I asked, though I realized, that if our situation was reversed, and he was helping me through a rut, the thought of biting him would be incessant. It was incessant even when I was dealing with a rut by myself. 

Nicky nodded. “But…I resisted. I didn’t lose my self-control completely.”

I kissed the middle of his back. “I told you, by the time this is over…”

He huffed out a laugh. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“You never have to thank me for this,” I told him, “It’s an honor.”

He laughed. “Sure.”

“I’m serious, Nicky.”

He turned the little he could to face me. “What?”

“I know it’s not – It’s – just not the same for you. We were raised differently. Where I’m from, in my religion, this – this is a sacred thing, Nicky. The most beautiful and sacred of occasions. And to be invited to share this with you – I mean this with every fiber of my being: It is the greatest honor of my life. Second only to – well, if we were getting married.”

He was quiet for a moment, and slowly smiled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I know that it’s not the same for you. And I didn’t want you to think that I was dismissing how – how awful this is for you. Nor did I want to obligate you into making it mean more than it does for you.”

He smiled wider, and pulled me into an awkwardly angled kiss. 

“It isn’t awful for me,” he said, “It could have been. But I have you. And if it means a lot to you…then it means a lot to me. It’s not an obligation.”

“Really? You aren’t just trying to make me feel better?”

“Really,” he said. 

I grinned impossibly wide at him. “I am going to prove my worth to you every minute for the next four days.”

He huffed. “You have already done that.”

I shrugged. “That won’t stop me from doing it a million more times.”

He yawned, then. “Well, at least stop until I wake up.”

“You got it,” I said.

He was quiet as I turned to switch of the light. When I pulled him close to me again, he said, “Second only to marrying me?”

I blushed, though he couldn’t see it. “Yes.”

He was quiet for what felt like a year.

“Marrying you…now that _would_ be an honor,” he mumbled, almost too quietly to hear. 

I didn’t know how to respond to this, and before I could figure it out, he fell asleep. Seconds later, his purr reverberated throughout the room.

I perked my head up, not believing my ears at first. Then I pressed my head against his back, listening. Nicky so rarely purred, and for him to be purring now, during his heat, meant that he was comfortable. That he was free of pain. That all his needs were met. And that he was happy. 

I had proven myself as an alpha.

I started to purr too.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're curious, my tumblr URL is kill-you-authors@tumblr.com.


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